The Winter Sister(46)

“What was he in prison for?” I asked.

“Sexual assault.”

I admired how quickly she said it.

Reaching for my water again, I finally started to see it. Tommy might have followed Persephone that night, just like Ben said. He might have driven far enough behind them that, with the snow coming down, his headlights would have been difficult to see in the rearview mirror. Maybe when Persephone stormed out of Ben’s car, Tommy saw his opportunity. Maybe he drove up beside her and offered her a ride. She wouldn’t have taken one, though. She would have rather walked all the way home just to be able to hold it over Ben’s head later. You were being so stupid, I could imagine her saying, that I chose trudging home in a fucking blizzard over being in that car with you for one more second. Maybe Tommy grew angry when she declined the ride. He seemed to think they had some sort of connection—two lonely souls in a town too self-absorbed to care for them—so maybe he saw her refusal as a betrayal. Maybe he got out of the car, reached for her, but slipped on the slickening road. Still fuming from her fight with Ben, Persephone might have laughed at him then, and the next time he reached for her, his hands might have been stretching toward her neck.

“So you never really thought it was Ben who did it?” I asked.

Falley shrugged. “With boyfriends, there’s always that suspicion. Call it sexist, call it history, but it’s there. I don’t know, though. My instinct was always that he didn’t do it.”

Still, he wasn’t innocent, and night after night, I had agreed to be his accomplice.

“But what about the bruises?” I asked. “When I talked to Detective Parker the other day, he said you guys decided not to file any assault charges against Ben, even though he admitted that he’d been the one to hurt her. Why would you do that?”

I saw the exact moment she closed up. It was like watching a flower unbloom, tucking in its petals until it was nothing more than a tight, protected bud.

“I can’t speak to that,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

I lunged closer to the table. “What do you mean you can’t speak to that? You just told me everything about Tommy. Come on, Fal—Hannah. Please. Just tell me why you didn’t arrest him for hurting her.”

She shook her head, and I could tell by the way she folded in her lips that she wasn’t going to answer me. “I told you about Tommy,” she said, “because I think you have a right to know. If he did kill Persephone, or even just knows who did, then he’s a danger to you. Now that he’s out of jail, I don’t want you running into him somewhere, completely in the dark.”

“But Ben could be a danger to me,” I insisted. “He—listen. The only reason I’m even back in Spring Hill is because my mother is sick. She has cancer, and I’m here to take care of her. And I—”

“Oh, that’s awful,” Falley said, the taut lines around her eyes instantly softening. “I’m really sorry to hear that.”

“Thanks. But—the point is, Ben’s a nurse now. A nurse. And he works on the same floor where my mom is getting her treatment twice a week.” Falley’s eyebrows shot up. “I know, right? So you see why this is important. I’m going to be around him a lot. And I know you don’t think he killed Persephone, but you do know that he abused her, he told you he did. So what’s to stop him from hurting me, too?”

Falley looked down at her mug, and when she met my gaze again, her eyes seemed cautious but resolute.

“I don’t believe Ben abused your sister,” she said quietly. “At least not in the way you think.”

I jerked backward. It’s not what you think. That’s what Persephone had always said.

“What other way could there be?” I asked. “She had bruises. Ben said he gave them to her. That’s clearly abuse.”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“But what did you mean?”

“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I can’t tell you about that. It’s just, you have to understand, I worked your sister’s case for a long time. In some ways, it feels like I’m still working it. And I didn’t know her, but I feel like I did. All the interviews and searches, all the dead-end leads we followed. You start to get an idea of a person. And that idea of her, it’s real to me, Sylvie. She’s real to me.”

She picked up her mug and took a slow, measured sip. “I think there are things she didn’t tell you,” she said, setting her coffee back on the table. “Things we learned over the course of the investigation. And I know it probably doesn’t make sense to you, and it probably doesn’t seem fair, but I’d feel like I was betraying her if I told you what you want to know. And I already betrayed her once by not solving her case. I can’t do it again.”

I opened my mouth to push back, to insist that I had a right to know whatever it was she thought Persephone had kept from me, but in that moment, the guilt on Falley’s face was palpable. And I knew, better than anyone, how guilt kept you in debt to the dead.

“I’m sorry, Sylvie,” she said. “The last thing I wanted to do tonight was upset you, but clearly I have.” Her fingers fidgeted with the handle of her mug, and then she lifted her wrist, making a show of checking the time. “Maybe I should just get going. I’m, uh, I’m sorry to make this so short, it’s just—Alyssa likes it when I’m there to watch her dance. I told her I couldn’t make any promises tonight but I’d try.” She dug into the purse beside her on the booth and pulled out her wallet. “Of course, to a six-year-old, ‘I’ll try’ means ‘Yes, honey, I’ll definitely be there.’?”